My current primary interest is in causal inference and multi-stage decisions sometimes called dynamic treatment regimes or adaptive treatment strategies. Dynamic treatment regimes are individually tailored treatments; formally a dynamic treatment regime is a sequence of decision rules that specify when to alter the therapy and specify which intensity or type of subsequent therapy should be offered. The decision rules employ variables such as patient response, risk, burden, adherence, and preference, collected during prior therapy. In a dynamic regime, the decision rules are specified prior to the beginning of the initial therapy. These regimes hold the promise of maximizing treatment efficacy by avoiding ill effects due to over-treatment and by providing increased treatment levels to those who can benefit. Once developed, the decision rules can be used to augment/enhance the clinical judgment used in practice.
I am particularly interested in developing statistical methods and experimental designs that can be used in formulating dynamic treatment regimes. I work with researchers at The Methodology Center on these topics. The center and my component are funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Statistics 425
Research Professor, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan
Fellow of the American Statistical Association
Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics
B.S. Mathematics, Louisiana State University, 1980
Ph.D. Statistics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1989
Murphy S.A. & van der Vaart A.W. (1997) Semiparametric Likelihood Ratio Inference. Annals of Statistics 25 1471-1509
Murphy S.A. & van der Vaart A.W. (2000) On Profile Likelihood (with discussion). JASA 95 449-485
Murphy S.A., van der Laan M.J., Robins J.M. & CPPRG (2001) Marginal Mean Models for Dynamic Regimes. JASA 96 1410-1423
Murphy S.A. (2003) Optimal Dynamic Treatment Regimes (with discussion). JRSSB 65(2) 331-366
Collins L., Murphy S.A. & Bierman K. (2004) A Conceptual Framework for Adaptive Preventive Interventions. Prevention Science 3 185-196
Collins L., Murphy S.A., Nair V. & Strecher V (2004) A Strategy for Optimizing and Evaluating Behavioral Interventions. To appear in Annals of Behavioral Medicine